In 1994, word went ’round the Internet of Robert Anton Wilson‘s death in the form of a phony Los Angeles Times obituary. As it turns out, when he actually died last week, it went unnoticed in the LAT, although the LA Daily News ran an unbylined AP obit that reads awfully similar to the piece filed by veteran NYT staffer Dennis Hevesi. Tributes to Wilson also proliferated online; R.U. Sirius honored him for “open[ing] me up to a world of possibilities as large as space travel and as small as quantum physics,” while HuffPo regular Paul Krassner looked back at their long friendship, and even Wonkette got into the act. (After all, Wilson sorta ran in the California gubernatorial runoff on the Guns and Dope Party platform.)
When we contacted Douglas Rushkoff, who led the fundraising effort to make Wilson’s last days comfortable, an act of reciprocal kindness to “the only one of my heroes who I was not disappointed to actually meet in person,” he told us, “I refused to allow the history books to say he died alone and destitute. It was important to me for future generations to know we appreciated Robert Anton Wilson while he was alive.” Author Daniel Pinchbeck added:
“Wilson was one of the few thinkers to carry the torch of occult ideas and non-ordinary consciousness through the last decades, when the mainstream culture turned off its mind to these essential aspects of psychic reality. His death comes at a time when the countercultual energies are regathering, and interest in subtler dimensions of being is growing among those with open minds. He was a true pioneer and a cogent thinker with a sharp wit, and one of the last of his generation of genius tricksters and edge-realm explorers. As a legacy, he has left a great road map for future wizards and shamanic initiates to follow.”